Libby, the author of several religious titles (The Forgiveness Book, 2010, etc.), makes his fiction debut with a charming, evocative coming-of-age novel.
In 1947, 16-year-old Cooper Dawkins is a normal American kid with a big problem—his parents are divorcing. Through a teacher at his Long Island high school, Cooper gets a job at a summer hotel in Vermont and considers it a perfect chance to escape. Planning to pass himself off as older and full of the ambition to “become a man, although he wasn’t quite sure what that meant,” Cooper arrives in Vermont and quickly discovers he sticks out like a sore thumb among the college students staffing the hotel (his proudly purchased cigarettes even turn out to be the wrong brand). He flirts with the beautiful Ronnie and the treacherous Sheila and befriends the brassy but true-hearted Rosie, who is proudly Jewish. The casual anti-Semitism Rosie endures, along with the fashions, music and mores, effectively evoke the era, warts and all. Cooper is assigned to the kitchens, presided over by the temperamental German chef Rudy and his long-suffering wife, Gretchen. Between his secret drinking, temper tantrums and vile screeds against Rosie, Rudy makes a memorable villain, though he also shows Cooper great kindness in the kitchen. As the summer wears on, Cooper has to contend with thwarted romance, sexual humiliation, an over-the-top confrontation with Rudy and an urgent summons home from his mother before the season is over. These bitter touches are a wonderful contrast to the frequent doses of nostalgia and give the work a pleasing verisimilitude. The commentary of the hotel’s gossipy laundry ladies is a distracting narrative device, and some of the characterizations of the staff go no deeper than their college affiliations, but these are small missteps. Luckily for readers, Cooper’s remembered summer ends on a high note, drawing to a memorable, satisfying conclusion. Given the potential for sentimentality in this material, restraint turns out to be the most admirable thing about Libby's prose; his matter-of-fact sentences evoke details without bogging down in wistfulness. A truthful, touching coming-of-age novel that will have particular appeal for 1940s buffs and connoisseurs of New England summer-hotel culture.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-1461194231
Page Count: 275
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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